Yellowstone

Wildlife

~ again ~

"When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us."

~ Arapaho Proverb

Bison

Yesterday we saw a bison calf in our campground. How lovely to have bison entertainment with my coffee. This photo was taken from Thistle's window...

As Ed and I were exploring early this morning, a bison mom and her calf crossed the road in front of Thistle. The tiny baby was wobbly, but keeping up with mom. Mom has just given birth as the placenta was still dangling from her body. One of the wildlife-viewers told us the calf was probably about an hour old, as they need to join their herd quickly. Mom will protect her calf, with the entire herd helping out. It's clearly birthing season. Just today we saw about a dozen new calves. Prior to today, we'd only seen two.

Here's mom and her new calf...

At this same location there was a buffalo carcass near one of the ponds, well dined on by bear, cougars and wolves. Now it's raptor time. As a herd of buffalo moved single-file along side the pond, they left the trail, one-by-one, moving near the carcass where they each paused and sniffed it, as if paying homage.

And, back in camp, two women were trapped in the restroom by a dozen bison slowly grazing their way through camp.

Coyote

We observed a coyote slowly walking on the snow when suddenly he jumped straight up in the air, with all four paws leaving the ground. He came down with a prey pounce, but missed the mark. Off he went.

Bear

A very sleepy bear attracted a number of cars and much excitement, especially with the kid-tour that happened by. While we were watching, the bear got up for a drink of water, and then promptly went right back to sleep...

A Couple of hours later, on our return trip, he was still sleeping. I guess he left hibernation before he was ready.

Elk

After seeing no elk, they are now returning from the lower winter elevations to the park...

Wolf

And then there are the wolves. Both Ed and I saw wolves today, courtesy of a wolf-watcher sharing his high-powered scope. We almost rented a scope for tomorrow, but couldn't track down the rental folks. Guess we're saved from ourselves -- for now! The wolf world is getting into our blood.

~~~

"Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what's weird, different, other, but to a world where we humans do not matter nearly as much as we like to think. And that should be enough."

~ Richard Conniff

Posted with Blogsy